kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 6 Sep 2010, Alex G wrote:

> I've actually been surprised by Intel's support in the linux arena. It
> works out of the box. And yes, my OpenGL code runs on Intel without a
> hitch (performance not counted).

Intel doesn't do high perf 3d cards, so it doesn't surprise me :D

> And also, it just happens that the 3D viewer only works on nvidia cards
> (everything else I tried segfaults, and other than using wxWidgets, I
> can;t fing the culprit in the kicad code). :-P

I had the same problem; no idea about where it's the problem (but
blender works fine on intels... maybe that's because it's 100% opengl).

> An old GF2MX400 could handle tons of 3D with millions of polygons.
> Everything today is more powerful than that, so there's no reason to shy
> on the quality of the models.

Be warned that consumer cards may have humungous fill rate but may lack
in geometry processing... that's why in the old agp days my firegl
pumped geometry *way* faster than even quadros (it had a dedicated
geometry engine AND took two slots :D). Modern gpus are actually more
like general purpose processors so things have changed (look at what
CUDA does these days...)

The real question is... what are complex model for? Eye candy or what?:D
For most *engineering* processes (i.e. mechanical integration)
a bounding box or something equally plausible is more than sufficient.
Connectors could be an exception for their 'live side'.

--
Lorenzo Marcantonio
Logos Srl